Saturday, July 2, 2011

Food: House (formerly known as Social KL) @ FoodHive, GTower

*Update (05/10/11): This place has changed names to House, but at the time of review, it was still known as Social KL.

After about 3 months of consistent food blogging, our good friend Alex invited us along for our first food review at one of the 'it' places to be of late, GTower!

GTower is one of the newest high-rise buildings to dot the KL skyline. Comprising of offices, a hotel, and restaurants and bars at its peak, GTower is really your all-in-one place. Down at the Lower Ground floor is FoodHive, which is where majority of the eateries are, with familiar names like Subway and Rakuzen amongst them.

We started our afternoon of with light bites at Social KL, a lovely new concept establishment that combines a restaurant, a bar and a winepost. Warm wooden finishings and friendly staff greeted us.

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Wendy loved the colourful bottles on the shelves.

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I think it's important to note that this Social KL is not the same as The Social in Bangsar, although you'd be forgiven for thinking they belong to the same chain (that's what I thought too). So please don't go to the Social in Bangsar and rant about how the menu is different; it's like that because they are 2 different outlets.

The impressive winepost.

Looking over the lower ground dining area from the winepost.

As I mentioned, Social KL in GTower is unique as it combines the elements of restaurant dining, bar drinking and wine appreciation, all divided into separate floors. At the lobby level is where you'll find the restaurant and at the lower ground floor you'll find the bar, comprising of an outside area and a more cozy dining ambience. Halfway up there is the wine post - a wine cellar / tasting area. Customers can actually choose from over a hundred different types of wine - that's how wide their selection is! (And it's probably the only place in KL where you can sip on some good wine...under a tree.)

The place where the merry-making happens! The bar downstairs, and in the background, the outdoors drinking area.

Social KL is big on the greenery, so you'll find yourselves drinking below trees, and trunks growing out from your table ;)

We were led downstairs to have a lookaround, and introduced to Jerry, the Director of Operations at Social KL. Not long after, the food came!

The first thing we had was their special drink, the Homemade Social-iced (pronounced Socialized -interesting play on words) Fruit Tea (RM 12.90), which is iced tea that is topped with a scoop of sorbet flavour of your choice. The sorbet in the picture is mango, but they also have other flavours like lychee, peach, lime, lemon, mango and calamansi. The tea was refreshing, perfect for a hot day when mixed with the sorbet. Unlike the usual ice lemon tea that is mixed with sugar, this sorbet is obviously a healthier and tastier alternative to that. The sorbet is also strictly controlled and comes from one sole supplier to ensure that only the best quality is used.

Next up, came the Social KL's Wild Mushroom Soup (RM 15.90) which was their signature soup. Jerry mentioned that this soup was a 'cappuccino' style (!!!) I know what you're thinking - cappuccino + mushroom?

That's exactly what we all thought when we were told, but we soon realized this was a perfect combination and had one of those why-didn't-I-think-of-this-before moments. Despite the name, there's no strong coffee flavour in the soup. Instead it refers to the frothiness as the top layer, and it actually remains creamy and frothy even after being served for some time. The soup was also nicely flavourful, and the whole experience is complete when eaten together with the accompanying buttery garlic bread; I had to control myself from snatching all the bread around the table! (I did greedily take the last piece though =P). This is definitely something that I will be returning for.

Next came the Pizza Chicken Satay (RM 25.90). Served on a thin crunchy pizza base, this was topped topped with everything you'd get from your satay uncle - fresh cucumbers, onions, sweet peanut sauce and obviously, Social KL's own satay chicken, richly marinated with tumeric - exactly what you would get when eating satay!

Of course, no pizza is complete without mozzarella cheese, but this fusion didn't taste odd at all. What really made this pizza unique was the sweet satay peanut sauce used instead of the usual tomato or cream base. It gave the pizza a strong satay flavour overall, and never for a moment did we miss any tomato puree on this pizza.

The other pizza we were given to try was the Pizza Teriyaki Salmon (RM 29.90). Also set on a thin crust base, this pizza was generously topped with mayonnaise, thick slices of avocado, bonito shavings, and salmon (duh!). Bonito shavings (aka. katsuobushi) is the stuff commonly found on takoyaki balls or in Japanese bento sets.

This was another tasty combination, with rich, strong flavours of the salmon, avocado and bonito delightfully mingling. The teriyaki sauce gave the pizza its sweet taste, but not sweeter than the Pizza Chicken Satay above. It's obvious from the picture that there was a lot of bonito shavings to go round, and there was no scrimping on avocado either. We couldn't decide if the salmon had been cooked or smoked though - my first thought was it had been smoked because it was quite salty, but others thought otherwise because it looked more cooked. A mystery to solve for our next visit?

Last but not least, came the Peking Duck with Deep Fried Mantou Bun (RM 15.90) served with Hoisin dipping sauce.

It truly isn't difficult to see where the inspiration for this little snack comes from, with a small piece of spring onion and cucumber, and slice of duck sandwiched between a mini man tou bun and lots of sweet sauce. Just change the man tou to the flat pancakes and it'll instantly turn into a peking duck dish.

Although the idea seemed unique (and the girls thought the buns were very cute), it didn't taste very special to me. However, I do think this would make great bar food, and can really see this being shared among friends over a few pints of beer.

Overall, we were well taken care of by the management at Social KL. I think we got to sample some of the highlights on the menu, although I get the feeling there is a lot more to offer here. They also offer some great value lunch sets from RM 19.90++, which is a price tag that is difficult to find in the heart of town. Jerry told us that there's also always other ongoing promotions so hopefully Wendy and I can come back another time to try out other treats at Social KL!

Special thanks to, of course, Alex and Gladys from GTower for showing us around on Saturday. Keen to know more about our food escapade around GTower? More that we sampled are coming right up...

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